An environmental campaign against a type of plastic containing toxic chemicals — a push

led by the most well-known former resident of Love Canal — made a stop at the University

at Buffalo on Sunday.

Lois Gibbs, who in the late 1970s was the face of the fight against hazardous waste buried

beneath a Niagara Falls neighborhood, called for an end to the use of PVC at colleges across

the state.

PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, is widely used, but contains chemicals which pose threats from

its manufacture through usage and disposal, Gibbs said.

The chemical, which is essentially the same as vinyl, is a threat in the products we use

and the food we eat, Gibbs said, and exposure to toxins are suspected to be causes of birth

defects and learning disabilities.

Ninety percent of consumer products contain chemicals that get into the human body and the

environment, Gibbs said. The most commonly used product that contains PVC is a shower curtain.

The smell of a new shower curtain is actually the release of more than 100 chemicals, Gibbs

said.

"It's not just the Love Canals, not just the incinerators, not the garbage dump

necessarily," she said. "It's your consumer products."

Gibbs, who is in the midst of a two-week speaking tour at universities in New York,

addressed about 40 people in UB's Knox Hall as part of this weekend's PowerShift NY

conference.The former head of the Love Canal Homeowners Association is the executive director

of the Virginia-based Center for Health, Environment and Justice. That organization is leading

a national campaign, "PVC: The Poison Plastic," the aims of which include convincing companies

to stop selling products that contain PVC, getting items with PVC out of schools and

increasing the use of building products that contain no PVC.

PVC is not recyclable, and is either landfilled or incinerated, the latter of which

releases the carcinogen known as dioxin into the environment.

The production of the chemicals that make up PVC is also hazardous, including to employees

of plants where the chemicals are made, Gibbs said.

Several corporations have agreed to begin phasing out the sale of products which contain

PVC, including Wal Mart and Target, said Mike Schade, PVC campaign coordinator for the Center

for Health, Environment and Justice.

Some electronics manufacturers, car makers and toy manufacturers have also pledged to cut

out PVC.

For Gibbs, this push against PVC is a continuation of her work in the environmental

arena."I realized when I moved from Love Canal, that I couldn't move away from the problem,"

Gibbs said today. "The problem was all around us."